According to a report on Revolution-News, four high school students who organized several demonstrations against the Education Ministry of Honduras this past week, were found dead in the country’s capital, Tegucigalpa. Jennifer Baker reports, Soad Ham, a 13-year-old student leader of the Central Institute of Tegucigalpa who participated in the student protests against the Honduran government in the last two weeks, was found tortured and killed inside a plastic bag on Wednesday. On Thursday, the opposition Libre Party called for protests against the assassination of Soad Ham and 3 other student leaders. The students were protesting against the new “reforms”…

According to an 809 page report titled “Contribution to the Understanding of the Armed Conflict in Colombia”, published in February, 2015, the U.S. soldiers and military contractors had sexually abused at least 54 children in Colombia between the years 2003 and 2007. The report was written as part of the on going peace negotiations between the leftwing rebel group FARC and the Colombian Government that started in November 2012, to assist the negotiators in determining who were the responsible parties in the bloody conflict. The negotiations seek an end to Colombia’s 50-year-old internal conflict with the FARC that has led to 220,000 deaths…

The poorest country in the Middle East is fast becoming the newest and hottest disaster in the region. There are many dimensions to the chaos in Yemen; sectarian, political, geographic. The Yemeni government collapsed at the beginning of this year. Its Western and Saudi backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi resigned under pressure in January, 2015, after the Shia militia, known as Houthis, seized the presidential palace and besieged his residence in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. The Houtes are partially backed by Iran and their power base is in the mainly Shia northern highlands. Houtes has been at war with Al Qaeda and other hardcore…

How did the United States get into another Cold War with Russia? The Nation Magazine’s editor-in-chief, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and American scholar of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University, Prof. Stephan Cohen offered historical context on this question in a discussion hosted by the American Committee for East-West Accord in Brussels earlier this month. “Does media coverage shape the political agenda or vice versa? Probably both, or variously depending on the subject. But the US media, by so unequivocally accepting the official US Government/EU version of events, blaming all on Russia, failing to provide history, nuance, let alone complexity, is now…

What really happened in Greece and Spain? Will Syriza and Podemos be able to bring economic and social stability to their countries? Listen to our editor Emine’s interview with Progressive News Network to learn more about the Eurozone crisis and the new emerging parties of the EU.

Action On The Ground

Dear Good People of West Virginia: “Freedom” and “Patriot” do not mean what you think they do. We have breaking news today of a new Big Coal disaster in the offing in The Mountain State. Just days after the Dan River coal ash spill affecting North Carolina and Virginia, and mere weeks after West Virginia’s own Freedom Industries Elk River chemical debacle (which cost the citizens of that state over $19 million each day the “do not use” water order was in effect) – here we have another coal behemoth, Patriot Coal, scurrying to “inform” the public about a new…

A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE to our report yesterday on the Dan River Coal Ash Disaster affecting North Carolina and Virginia: As reported by John Downey of The Charlotte Business Journal late last night, the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Division of Water Resources has admitted that the arsenic levels their agency originally published on Thursday as falling “within state standards” did, in fact, exceed the standards for human health consumption. We have been in touch with Tom Reeder, Director of DENR’s Division of Water Resources, whose office just issued a press release. Within the release, Mr….

Under his hoodie, 25 year-old engineer Jorge Arzuaga looks like any young man who is ready to go to a soccer match in Madrid, Spain. Against the backdrop of Puerta del Sol Square, bustling with tourist activity in this cool October evening, Jorge’s mission is not one of temporary entertainment but permanent change. Jorge declared a hunger strike on October 12, 2013 to go about that change, demanding the resignation of a government which he calls corrupt and illegitimate. Jorge recently finished college with an engineering degree, and promptly joined the ranks of millions of new graduates who are not…

Featured Headlines

Caglayan Courthouse in Istanbul, Turkey, was a scene of scuffle and disgrace earlier today, when a group of police officers beat up and detained more than 50 attorneys who were in the courthouse to represent their clients. The majority of the attorneys were the legal representatives of some of the protestors who were illegally detained or injured by the Turkish police during the ongoing protests in Istanbul and throughout the country. In a move that casts doubt on the Turkish government’s commitment to the rule of law, an additional 30 attorneys were dragged out of the courthouse by force when…

Over two million protesters rallied in 300 cities in 44 countries around the world on Saturday, as part of a global protest against the seed giant Monsanto and the genetically modified food it produces. The debate over genetically engineered food has been going on since the FDA concluded that there was no difference between genetically engineered and non-engineered plants in 1992. Genetic engineering advocates claim that the GMOs could reduce World hunger and increase nutritional quality in foods. Unfortunately, most of these claims have been debunked repeatedly, as Anna Lappe explains in her 2011 article on Civil Eats. The March…

The devastation in Moore, Oklahoma is unimaginable. A deadly F-5 tornado hit this town on May 20th, 2013 and the death toll continues to rise as time passes by. Plaza Towers Elementary school was directly in the path of this horrific storm. Even though Moore, OK, resides in the middle of tornado alley, Oklahoma politicians denied the children of this school, a tornado shelter. These children were denied the freedom to be properly sheltered from Mother Nature’s wrath. Instead, these kids were forced to depend only on the walls of the school to protect them from an F5 tornado. The…

I realize that, by writing this, I am bringing unnecessary tsuris into my life. So be it. Since when did we become a gaggle of punk haters (read: not punk-haters)? If I understand this correctly, many of you would like to have the body of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev “fed to the sharks” or “mutilated….desecrated” or “incinerated” or “shipped to Russia”. Are we in agreement so far? OK. I’d like to know what I’m missing here because I don’t think this is how we, as Americans, behave. This is not how we treat the dead; yes, even that dead…

Archives

14-year- old Wasilat Tasi’u is on trial for the murder of her 35-year-old husband. Nigerian teen was married to a man that she didn’t love. According to Zubeida Nagee, a women’s rights activist in Kano, “She protested but her parents forced her to marry him.” From a poor rural family, Wasilat is accused of murdering her husband, Umar Sani, by lacing his food with rat poison. Forced marriages and child brides common in the poverty-stricken northern Nigeria region. Her case calls into question the legality of trying a teenager for murder under criminal law and the rights of child brides….

Dear Good People of West Virginia: “Freedom” and “Patriot” do not mean what you think they do. We have breaking news today of a new Big Coal disaster in the offing in The Mountain State. Just days after the Dan River coal ash spill affecting North Carolina and Virginia, and mere weeks after West Virginia’s own Freedom Industries Elk River chemical debacle (which cost the citizens of that state over $19 million each day the “do not use” water order was in effect) – here we have another coal behemoth, Patriot Coal, scurrying to “inform” the public about a new…

Kevin Scott Sutay, a veteran of the USA war in Afghanistan who wandered in to territory of the Colombian rebels while backpacking in the region, was taken hostage by the rebel group FARC four months ago. He was quietly turned over to Cuban and Norwegian International Red Cross officials yesterday. The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s office issued a statement, saying: “We are pleased about the liberation today of U.S. citizen Kevin Scott Sutay who was in the hands of the FARC.” The statement included gratitude to the Colombian government and President Juan Manuel Santos for their efforts. The…